As was pointed out elsewhere, this was applied for a year before Google Glass was shown at all.

However, patents versus material commitment are very different. The latter requires some effort.

So MS is copying Google on this, despite that they put in this patent application over a year ago, and despite that these types of devices have been discussed for decades and only now practical? This is very obviously not a "me too" effort, but even if it was... who cares? Competition is a good thing.

I'm curious if you're arguing that Microsoft shouldn't hedge their risk to Google Glass taking off by building a competitive product?

There are certainly a bunch of areas where Microsoft are also innovating (see Microsoft Research).

Microsoft Research: innovating to keep ideas away from other technology companies through patent hoarding.

I'm not convinced anyone should be developing this product.

I hope this isn't really your view of MSR; if it is, you might consider whether your opinions of Microsoft are coloring your perception. How is all of the academic work done on Haskell, for example, motivated by an impulse to exclude others from the technology? Or consider the MSR contributions to the papers on http://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards.html, many of which are theoretical in nature. Do you view Xerox PARC or Bell Labs's research in the same way?

Disclosure: I'm doing some contract work with the F# team in MSR Cambridge.

This is incredibly unfair. None of us (I work for MSRA) are doing research just to collect patents, we would totally like to change the world, like any researcher (e.g. in Google or Microsoft).

Not a rebuttal. A relevant rebuttal would be to cite management and legal behavior with regard to the patents your work generates.

But you must know that we can't talk about that whether or not I have a decent rebuttal. But perhaps I could say that our incentives are clearly weighted toward innovation for the sake of new and better products.

No. Microsoft has a lot of undisclosed research projects. They're just really bad at marketing at them. Media is going gaga for Google's driverless cars and wearable computing.